July 22, 2000
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The Popularity & Power of Jesus - Luke 6:17-19
The Popularity and Power of Jesus
Luke 6:17-19
"And He descended with them and stood on a level place; and there was a great multitude of His disciples, and a great throng of people from all Judea and Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon, who had come to hear Him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured. And all the multitude were trying to touch Him for power was coming from Him and healing them all."
Here we see two things, the popularity and power of Jesus summarized. First of all, I want you to look at the popularity of Jesus. Luke wants us to see is how popular Jesus had become. Nobody had ever been this popular in Israel, no would-be self-styled Messiah had ever commanded this kind of attention. The popularity of Jesus is indicated in verse 17, "He descended with them and stood on a level place and there was a great multitude of His disciples and a great throng of people from all Judea, Jerusalem and the coastal region of Tyre and Sidon."
Every day in His ministry it was like this, every day. They didn't go away. They came, they stayed. Night came, He retreated. Came back in the morning, they're still there. Staggering popularity. Chapter 4:42 says, "The multitudes were searching for Him. He went to a lonely place." He just had to get away from this crush so He went to a lonely place and the people were searching for Him and they found Him and they tried to keep Him from going away from them. This is dangerous stuff. You've got a huge mob and here in the text that we're reading they were all trying to touch Him. This is a crush. Chapter 5:15 says, "The news about Him was spreading even farther and great multitudes were gathering to hear Him and be healed of their sicknesses." This thing is just mounting, the momentum in this thing is bordering on the frightening, unequaled popularity.
Luke in a wonderful analytical way sorts out the crowd. First, he identifies them for us in verse 17, "And He descended with them.." That's Peter, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James the son of Alphaeus, Simon the Zealot, Judas the son of James, Judas Iscariot who became a traitor. He had gone up into the mountain to pray, He had prayed all night and seeking the perfection of the will of God to determine who the Twelve were. In the morning He came down, identified the Twelve who out of His disciples would become the Apostles. And we went through that long study learning about the Apostles. Now it says He descended with them.
So understand now, in the summary of the ministry of Jesus, He's surrounded by the Twelve. That's the most intimate group. And what is an Apostle? Simple, he's a preacher. These are preachers in training. These are the ones who are going to have the responsibility to take the gospel to the world. These are the ones who are going to become the preachers of the gospel, the good news of forgiveness when Jesus is gone back into heaven. These are the shaliach, the official representatives, the official messengers of Christ. And he's identified them now for their formal training. As we already know, they were common men, weren't they? With an uncommon calling. These are to be the preachers of the Kingdom who are to take the gospel to Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and the uttermost part of the earth. And we saw in our study of them that they did. They were the evangelists, the messengers. It says that when He came down with them, in verse 17, He stood on a level place.
When Jesus taught, when the rabbis taught, they sat down. But He wasn't going to teach yet. He would teach soon and His teaching begins in verse 20 and it is the Sermon on the Mount. It's Luke version of the Sermon on the Mount. But before He sits to teach, Matthew says when He taught the Sermon on the Mount He sat down, Matthew 5, but He stands and He stands because He's not teaching yet, He's healing and He's casting out demons. He's in a place where the people are coming to Him. He takes a posture of standing. He stands on a level place because who knows how long this went on? So He found a level spot rather than a slope and He stood on that level spot and the people pressed in and pressed in and He stood there until He healed everybody. And the people with unclean spirits were cured, verse 18 says, then He took His seat, then He taught the great Sermon on the Mount which Luke records from verse 20 down to the end of the chapter in verse 49. Luke's record of the Sermon on the Mount is briefer than Matthew's, but absolutely consistent with it.
Group two, verse 17, "And there was a great multitude of His disciples." Now we go from the messengers to the learners, the disciples. First the Apostles, then the disciples. This is a big crowd, mega in Greek, thousands no doubt. This is an assortment of people who are regular followers of Jesus. They would say, "We are disciples, we are students of Jesus. We are learning. He is our chosen Teacher." They would be at all places on the spectrum, some of them would be new to learning and they don't even yet understand the message of Jesus, they're just beginning to grasp it. Some of them have just embraced the truth of Jesus and acknowledged Him as their Lord and Savior, repented of their sin and been forgiven by God. Others of them have been believers for a while. Some of them are those who are already beginning to become negative about Jesus and He's saying things they don't like to hear and they're going to be temporary disciples and they're going to disappear, as we saw in the sixth chapter of John. "Some of His disciples walked no more with Him," when they didn't hear what they wanted to hear. It's the mixed multitude. It's all the people who hang around Jesus of all kinds of levels of understanding and faith. It includes the real. It includes the weak, also includes the tares. Jesus had them all the time around Him, people who believed in Him to some degree but weren't real believers, they weren't true believers.
He began His ministry down in Judea, and it says He was at Jerusalem in the Passover, John 2:23, "During the feast many believed in His name." They beheld His signs, His miracles which He was doing. But Jesus on His part was not entrusting Himself to them for He knew all men and because He didn't need anyone to bear witness concerning man for He Himself knew what was in man." They believed but He never made a commitment to them because their faith wasn't saving faith. They believed to some degree, but not enough to be saved. John 8, Jesus said, "Here's what you have to do, you have to come with a faith like this, not just believing...but He says...whoever continues in My Word, he's My real disciple." It's somebody whose life has been transformed so that there's a pattern of obedience to what Christ says.
And finally, there are the curious. They're separated from the others by Luke as he says, "In addition to the disciples there's a great throng, another great throng, one great multitude of disciples, and another great throng of people." People...that's a technical term Luke uses for the uncommitted. They aren't messengers of the gospel, they aren't learners of the gospel, they're just people, they're just there. They're the curious, the uncommitted, the inquisitive, they were from everywhere.
What drew these three groups? That's the second point. The popularity of Jesus was the result of the power of Jesus. And there are three things I want to emphasize here because Luke emphasizes. There were three displays of power that attracted these people. The first is mental. Verse 18 says, "Who had come to hear Him." This is the preeminent work of His ministry, teaching, bringing divine truth to their minds. It was really the mind that He was after, and it's always the mind because it's only a knowledge of the truth that can save. A miracle can't save, a healing can't save, a casting out of a demon can't save. What can save is the truth and belief in the truth. That's why I've said to many times to you that the spiritual war is not fought against demons, it's not fought trying to get demons out of people, it's fought trying to get truth in their heads. And that was what Jesus did, He was a preacher and a teacher. Somebody said God only had one Son and He was a preacher. The feature of His ministry was His teaching, His preaching and He was preaching the good news, the good news of forgiveness, the good news of salvation, the good news of eternal life, the good news of hope, the good news of eternal peace and joy, the good news of heaven. And He preached it everywhere He went. He gave the good news that God would forgive the poor prisoners, blind and oppressed, the spiritually bankrupt, the destitute, the repentant. This was the most essential ministry Jesus had. If you want to be like Jesus, don't try to do miracles, just teach the truth. Jesus did the miracles to affirm that He was speaking the truth. He came to explain the truth of God and no one ever heard such a teacher. He had the most profound and perfect mind, He knew everything there was to know. He knew the truth of God, He was the truth of God incarnate, perfect control of every thought, perfect knowledge of every reality, perfect use of language, perfect use of emotion, perfect use of logic and reason so as to be nothing but clear, concise, convicting, penetrating, captivating and profound all at the same time. His teaching was unlike any other teaching ever. His mental agility, His mental clarity, His mental force, His mental depth drew the masses and true salvation came to those who heard and believed and embraced the truth. And He preached the Kingdom and forgiveness and how people could be forgiven and enter the Kingdom if they would believe in Him and cry out to God for forgiveness and salvation.
The second display of power that drew people was His power over the physical realm. He not only had power over the mind, He had power over the body. It says in verse 18 that He not only taught these people who came to hear Him, but He healed them of their diseases. In fact, He healed them all, says verse 19. His power over the physical realm was absolutely staggering. As I told you before, for all intents and purposes, He banished illness from the land of Israel for the duration of His ministry. Incredible miracles of healing were going on in mass, healing everybody and thousands of people were coming to Him. His healings were creative miracles. When they had an eye that didn't function, He gave them one that did. When they had an ear that didn't function, He gave them one that did. When they had a voice that didn't function, He gave them another one that did. When they had a leg that was deformed and paralyzed, He gave them a leg that functioned. When they had an arm that was withered or a hand, He gave them a whole one. This is creative. When they had muscles that were atrophied, He gave them muscles that were strong and flexible. When they had ligaments that were dried up and shriveled or severed, He gave them fresh ligaments. When they had abdominal organs that didn't function, He gave them brand new organs. When they had skin that was eaten away by leprosy, He gave them the skin of a baby and He made it out of nothing, like that. He created the universe and He created in His miracles and He showed that He had power over the physical. He had power to make the body whole and He had the power to make the mind whole. His display of power proved that He was God, He was the truth of God and the very power of God.
Thirdly, He demonstrated His power not only in His control over the mind, and over the body, but over the spirit, spiritual power. One of the problems then and always is satanic possession and verse 18 says those who were troubled with unclean spirits were being cured. One thing to be tormented in your body, one thing to be tormented because your arms don't work, your legs don't work, your eyes don't work, your ears don't work, your organs are diseased. It's another thing to be physically well and to have the very minions of Satan dwelling in your spirit, unclean spirits. Just a way to describe demons. They are spiritual beings who are filthy, vile and evil, they are the very demons of hell. We've already seen Jesus cast them out. We've seen in chapter 4 dramatic account step by step of how He dealt with a demon-possessed man in the synagogue. And now we see it on a wholesale level. He was just casting out demons from people who were coming to Him, curing them all, demonstrating that He could clean the soul.
What does this indicate? First of all, that He is God cause only God can do that. Secondly, follow this, this is a preview of what heaven is going to be and it proves to us that He is the Lord of heaven, that He is the God of very God, that He is the Savior and Redeemer who can and will give us a perfect mind, a perfect body and a perfect soul. Isn't that what heaven is? We long for the day when we have a clear, perfect, pure mind and we know the truth of God and is uncluttered with confusion and ignorance and sin. We long for the day when all of the infirmities of the body are gone. We long for the day when all the torturous problems of the soul and all the threats and temptations of Satan are forever banished. Jesus said, "Look, I can do that. I can bring the truth to your mind and give you a perfect mind. I can bring wholeness to your body and give you a glorified body with no infirmity, no sorrow, no sadness, no sickness, no dying. And I can take your soul and I can make it pure and free from any evil influence. This is what He does. This is what salvation is. And that full cleansing doesn't happen till we go to glory, but we're already in the process.
It also shows us how compassionate God is. If Jesus wanted to prove that He was God, He could have done a lot of things. He could of just stood there and gone up in the air about 50 feet and spun around like a helicopter, done some magic tricks and created a tree and created an animal and boom-bang and done some pretty startling things. Why does He deal with people's confusion? Why does He deal with people's infirmity? Why does He deal with people's possession? Because the heart of God is compassionate. If He's going to put His power on display, behind it is going to be the love and compassion of God. He's saying to the sinner, "I'm not doing things for My sake, I'm here to do things for your sake." The whole of salvation is to make you what you can be by His grace. This is our Christ. No wonder verse 19 says, "The people were trying to touch Him." There was a stampede here. Why were they trying to touch Him? "For power was coming from Him."
You want to ask who Jesus is? Here's your answer. Only God can do this. Only God the creator who created man in the first place can create a perfect man and a perfect body and a perfect soul. And that is what salvation does ultimately. That's where we're going. He proves it here.
One final thought. Since this is true, what do you think Jesus deserves? Curiosity? Is that all you want to give Him? Just want to hang around for the fascination? Or maybe you decide, "Oh, I think I'll be a disciples, I'll be a learner." And so you just take all you can get, you just take and take and take and take and take and take. What should you be? An apostle, right? A messenger. Is this good enough to tell everybody? What do you think people in America need to hear today? They need to hear this, don't they? Everything else is useless. Who's supposed to take it? We are. The curious, that's really sad, fascinated but not faithful. And discipleship can become this very comfortable taking thing. What the Lord is calling for is apostles, shake the trivia out of your life, stop being a taker and become a messenger.